Second Hand News
by The Quoi
Summary: Sometimes the best news you will ever hear comes through an unexpected person. R
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: I've been chewing on different plots for this story for a long time now. I'm not quite sure what is going to happen just yet, and I'm not quite sure where this will go, other than the obvious direction of Sarek and Amanda getting married and living together on Vulcan. So... Read this first chapter and tell me what you think about it. And yes, the title is actually a song by Fleetwood Mac. I think that "Go Your Own Way" would have been much more fitting with the first line being "Loving you isn't the right thing to do", but I loved the name "Second Hand News", so there you go._

Amanda Grayson was wet.

She stood on a woebegone street corner, road water sluicing in grimy rivers along the beaten curbs and amassing in little pools around overflowing drains and gathering in cracks and holes in the pavement. The rain beat down on her bare head with bleak resolution. It tapped incessantly at windows, beaded on the loamy tree leaves in the nearby park and bathed the sides of buildings. Under the downpour, her long grey cotton coat soaked up the water and turned a few shades darker, her wavy brown hair separating into strips, her eyelashes doing the same. In her drenched sneakers her freezing toes wiggled sadly, trying to retain any sense of warmth that they had before.

Humanoids passed by her woebegone street corner and flicked their eyes, with impassive curiosity, at her sad, sodden figure gazing out into the road with a despairing young face. Amanda barely moved, even when a hovercar, sleek and white, stopped to let her cross only to realize that she wasn't going anywhere.

Amanda knew that before the third world war, Earth had been a much tougher and unjust place to live in. She was thankful for the changes warp drive and first contact had brought the Human race and the joint equality in everything that was now shared in her world at the present time.

But life, being a creature of fickle ways, had certainly been unjust to her today.

* * *

Approximately sixteen light years away, the sun beat down heavily on the Vulcan city of Shi'Kahr. It was high noon, and a slight breeze kicked the dust from the deserts on the outskirts of the massive metropolis. Just as the sand began to churn, the weak winds would cease and the grains would fall back to the rocky, rust-coloured ground, only to be brought back up again minutes later. Overlooking this restless activity was an impressive spiralling stone building, its ancient, elegant curves buffed to shining from the close proximity of the merciless desert. High arched windows were cut in with green-tinged glass on every floor, with a handsome balcony to fit each one.

It was on one of these balconies that a Vulcan man stood, leaning forwards on the thick stone railing. He wore a light tunic, coloured a deep green, and simple black trousers and shoes. His black hair was cut close to his head, a style that Vulcans seemed to prefer, but if one looked close enough they would notice the slight inward or outward curves at the very ends of his shorn hair that insinuated curls. Being proud of his logical culture and their collective views, he made sure that his was cut regularly as a pre-emptive strike. He was young for a Vulcan, tall and tan. His face was strong; his brow was heavy over bright brown eyes, his nose long and wide and his mouth neat.

The young male was broodingly (in the most expressionless way possible) looking over the vast populated city without truly seeing it. His brilliant mind whirred with a million unanswered questions, theories and possible solutions, but he simply could not fathom whatever he was pondering. It not make the slightest bit of sense to him, and although it pained him to do it, the sole conclusion he could determine was that the reason must surely be illogical.

Seeing as the thing he was pondering was a decision made by Vulcans of very high regard and that he was forced to admit their reasoning was illogical, this was a very disturbing notion indeed.

"I fail to see the reason why I should depart for Earth at this time."

He turned, his hands clasped behind his back and his racing mind hid behind a calm, collected expression and faced the elderly woman standing in the doorway of the ancient balcony. She regarded him with stony resolve and Sarek (which was the name of our pondering young Vulcan)had a very strange feeling, deep inside of him, that she was mocking him. He could see it now, her flinty dark eyes laughing hysterically at the ridiculous task that was being asked of him.

"I have the proper documentation here", she said, thrusting a PADD towards him.

Sarek could only stare at the brightly clean scrap of technology in barely concealed dismay, wondering if this was some queer occurrence that humans called 'jest'. He took the PADD and on the screen of the handy device were the documents, real and signed. He closed his eyes. He opened them again. It was still there. The old woman with the laughing flinty eyes peered at him and then finally, with a lick of her wrinkly lips, she departed and he could practically hear her internal wheezy giggles as she left him alone to his fate.

* * *

Finally, after about fifteen minute of mindless staring, the notion floated into Amanda's despairing mind to move. She turned slowly to the right and began to walk, not caring where she was going or where she would end up. It didn't matter, nothing did. She was alone in an uncaring city, drenched to the bone in uncaring, cold rain. There was nowhere she could go, nothing she could do. All of her credits were gone, she had lost her wallet somehow. She knew her name was Amanda Grayson, she was in university for her teaching degree, she was twenty years old, her apartment number was 472 and her family was far, far away.

The memory of the night before was so vague it seemed like it wasn't real. She remembered entering the party with two of her friends that she had met in her university courses. The music thumped, the lights flashed, she danced and danced and danced... After a drink offered by a smiling young man, everything got blurry. She could remember only fuzzy moments.

The next thing she knew, she was lying face up in a strange room in strange clothes, looking at the underside of ancient beat-up furniture. Everything was so shocking to her that she got up and ran from the strange place, out the door and onto the street corner where the calamity of the situation hit her like the betraying strike from someone dear. Time itself had seemed to stand still as she painstakingly considered all the possibilities. She checked her strange pockets, and found her wallet was gone. She was alone in a strange part of town.

The only thing that was familiar to her were the shoes she wore. They were broken now, though. The silly pink sandals with the little plastic daisies on them. On her left foot, many of the white petals were gone. She couldn't help it, no matter how she tried. Amanda started to cry, and as she wept she pumped her legs faster and faster, leaving that strange, eerie place behind and not looking back.

* * *

In San Francisco it was wet.

Very, very unpleasantly, repulsively, horridly, and coldly wet.

Sarek's nose, of its own accord, wrinkled disgustedly. Vulcans were not people to dislike things, for it was illogical to do so. Simply because one does not enjoy something will not make it disappear. But if the idea ever entered Sarek's head to dislike something, it would surely be the rains and the thick fogs that tormented the coast, letting every ounce of water into every nook and cranny like some healthy plague. Seeing as Sarek's subconscious registered rainfall as 'plague', he became increasingly broody as the weight of the fog and the task he had been assigned sat heavily on his mind.

The wipers on the windshield of the sleek white Federation hovercar whisked back and forth, clearing the windows of the driving rain. Out of his window, he gazed emotionlessly at the soaked streets of an old part of the giant city; at the square brick buildings, the old fashioned store fronts, the cracked sludge-grey sidewalks and the crumbling curbs. At a street corner, the car came to a smooth halt and the silent human driver motioned at someone standing outside. They stood there hovering for a full ten seconds, then the driver motioned more quickly and angrily at the unseen person. Sarek flicked his eyes out of the window and saw a soaked girl standing on the old street corner and staring blankly ahead. She was not even wearing a coat to protect against the chill of the rain. _Illogical,_ he thought disapprovingly, _completely illogical_.

Finally, the driver got fed up with trying to convince the girl to cross, so he pulled away angrily and muttered to himself darkly all the way to the Vulcan Embassy. After what felt like the longest drive in his life, he arrived. He took his meagre amount of baggage from the trunk of the car, and walked beneath the depressing cover of the pouring rain, meeting an employee who helped him with his things. Once situated in his temporary office, he sat down at the small desk and pulled from his bag his own personal PADD. He checked to make sure that his reservations at the nearby hotel had been taken care of, and then pulled out some paperwork that he had left unfinished before his departure to Earth. It was the final documents he would ever look over and sign before his _new_ job starting the following week.

With consternation, he submitted the documents to the proper office before donning his bag and leaving for his hotel. Once checked in, he sat cross legged on the floor and looked out of his window. Still the rain kept falling, and looked like it was not going to halt anytime soon.

And to think that he was supposed to stay in this miserable wet city for an entire year? If Sarek were anything but Vulcan, he would indeed agree that he was not looking forward to it.

_A/N: Thanks for reading, please review and give me some feedback!_

_P.S. Don't worry, Amanda is not going to stay filled with baww for the whole story. She just had a bad experience. _


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Funnily enough, I had a backwards thought process to figure out what I was going to do with the entire plot of this story. Yes, I had started to write without knowing the plot. I work crazily like that. I write the beginning and then the plot comes to me on a silver platter. Actually, the entire plot came to me during a game of private message tag with _Woodrow Graham Kenobi-Rimmer. _Thanks dude. : D Thanks as well for the reviews that I got... How many? Two? Oh well. Better than nothin'. Anyway. I'll stop taking up space. Start reading the story and stop reading this. It's a tad short. I apologize.  
_

"I was under the impression that Earth and Vulcan trusted each other", Sarek quietly stated as he stared at the bright screen of his personal PADD. Finally settled inside his hotel room it was still far too cold for his liking and he found himself beginning to think of the warm deserts of his home planet. Night had fallen on the giant metropolis of San Francisco and the rain had slowed to a methodical, melancholy _tap, tap, tap_ on his windows. The bright flashing lights of the city below appeared like vague smudges of glittering colour through the clear droplets running down the glass. Sarek had been attempting to meditate and calm the disturbing thoughts that flew through his brilliant mind only to be interrupted by a call from the High Command.

At the first blaring beeps his dark eyes had snapped open and had taken a moment to observe the near-blackness of his room. His eyes flicked to the clock and observed the time, noting that it had taken nearly two hours to even get close to a state of calm. He had risen then at the second tirade of beeps issuing from the PADD sitting on a handsome oak desk at the far end of the room. He crossed the room in easy strides and flicking on a lamp, pressed the 'Receive' button on the bright screen. An emotionless old face of an unknown Vulcan male had materialized and greeted him, introducing himself and his purpose. He had then proceeded to give Sarek a full outline of exactly what was to be done during his mission, and Sarek's mind began to work like wildfire. He had never expected anything like this to happen, especially between to close races such as Humans and Vulcans.

"I thought we could trust the humans as well", the older Vulcan stated with the barest hint of distaste.

"Would it not be easier to send in a trustworthy human to infiltrate the group? I am fully capable of keeping up appearances, but if one were to discover me..." Sarek trailed off.

"That is our problem. We are not even sure if there are any humans that the High Council may trust enough to do this mission" the old Vulcan replied, "Now, we have prepared everything for you. In the bag you were given there are documents which confirm your new identity, and there is also a substantial amount of credits and suitable clothing. From now on, you are, in effect, no longer Sarek of Vulcan and I cannot be seen to have anything to do with you."

There was a moment's silence as Sarek stared at the screen of the PADD. He drank in the last look at a fellow Vulcan, a face belonging to the people of his homeland, before he finally agreed quietly to complete his mission to the fullest of his abilities. The call ended, and the wrinkled face was gone.

He gazed at the blank screen for another moment's silence before rising from his elbows perched on the wooden desk and striding over to the simple blue duffel bag given to him before he had left the capital. Opening it, he lifted out the crisp white folder that contained his new identity. He opened it and surveyed his new name typed on black ink on the paper.

It read "Samson Max Ashton". He rolled it quietly over his tongue a few times, comitting it to his vast memory. Afterwords, he closed the folder and placed it upon the carpeted floor, reaching his hand into the bag and pulled out the tools of his disguise. The plastic ear pieces to disguise his pointed ears looked ridiculous to him, and for one strange moment he felt as though something dark and opressing was weighing heavily down on him.

* * *

Miles away, a young girl with curly brown hair sat bundled in baggy, dry clothes at an ancient, chipped round dinner table underneath a yellowish glass light that hung from a tarnished fixture and chain. The outdated countertops and worn garish cupboards were cast under the golden light, and the girl clutched her old china tea cup and watched the steam curl upwards in spirals unique to one another as she digested the valuable advice that she had just received.

The television in the next room cast flashing bright white light on the empty sinking couch and coffee table. An orange tabby cat cracked one green eye open and stretched, yawning widely and jumping deftly from the squashy cushions to the dark carpet. It slunk across the room and stepped onto the scuffed linoleum, padding over to the fluffy pink slippers of an old woman sitting in her nightclothes at the dinner table. The woman leant her withered body down and lifted the cat onto her lap, caressing her wrinkled brown fingers over its silky fur, and the cat closed its eyes and purred softly.

The old woman gazed at the cat for a few moments, her wise face smiling at the feline before becoming serious again and lifting her head to peer at her young companion. She blinked once, long and slow, and then spoke, her voice thick and cracked from nearly seventy years of use.

"My dear, that is all that you can do, unfortunately. Forget and move on. I know that you thought you could trust him and the betrayal hurts, but remember; There is always at least one person you can trust", she said, rocking her chair back and forth and regarding the girl with as much softness as she could. "Now, I'm glad you came to visit me. You have to remember that no matter what, I'm here. Alright?"

The girl nodded, and lifted her cup to her cracked lips to take a sip of her dark tea. Replacing the cup on the chipped tabletop, she brought her cold fingers inside the thick, dark confines of the sweater she had been given and hugged her own arms. Her blue eyes were rimmed with red from crying.

Carefully, the old woman lifted herself from her rocking chair, setting the cat down on the floor and shuffling over to the girl who stood from her seat as well. Taking the girl's arm, she patted it gently and led her over to the couch where the Amanda laid down and was covered with a thick quilt.

"Now, I'm going to go to sleep. It's much too late for me! If you want to watch television, go ahead, but I think you should sleep too."

The girl nodded in agreeance, and the woman turned off the kitchen light before heading to her bedroom. Under the light of the TV, Amanda looked out the balcony window and observed the rain and the city lights until finally, she drifted off to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: I have Ozzy Osbourne's _Mr Crowley_ stuck in my head. Thanks a lot, Rock n' Roll Jesus. Thaaanks a lot. _

The thick extra strong glue that he had applied to his ears earlier was beginning to itch.

If he were any other being than a Vulcan, he would have already gone back to his provided apartment for the day if only to get rid of the glue. But he was Vulcan, and he had control over his impulses. He shifted in his seat, and looked down into the disposable cup that held the dark, hot beverage that humans adored so much. _Coffee_. He had comitted the name to memory. It would not do to be uninformed in this sort of mission.

Sarek, or Sam as he would now introduce himself, sat on a scuffed black stool at a high counter inside a little cafe on the corner of two popular streets in the shopping district of San Francisco. He watched the humans coming and going, and surveyed their interactions very intently, taking detailed observations and storing them in his vast memory. A young woman with blonde hair sat at one of the tables by the window, playing with the large bracelets on her thin arms. She looked nervous and expectant, but it vanished as soon as a young male walked in and sat across from her. Her face broke into a sunny smile, and her eyes never looked away from his face. He took her hand in his and he said something, and she laughed loudly, her cheeks reddenning. A pleased look graced her features.

At the bar, Sarek raised one eyebrow and looked away. _Interesting_. He peered about him and then fixed on a father holding his daughter's hand. They were at the cash register, speaking to the clerk behind the counter. The tiny girl hung on her fathers arm and looked up and him dolefully, pointing insistantly at some sweet in the glass display casing. He looked down and her and said "No" firmly. The girl swung his arm back and forth and whined until the father finally rolled his eyes and said, "Fine, but don't tell your mother". The girl giggled in glee and let go of his sleeve, turning and skipping towards a table at the far end of the cafe. She brushed past Sarek's dark leather coat as she went, and he followed her with his eyes until turning back to the cup in his hands that was rapidly losing heat.

Among the alarmingly large amount of things that were illogical about humans, clothing was something that Sarek simply could not fathom. The humans sense of what they called 'fashion' was something highly valued, though he could not understand why they put so much store into it. The styles often regurgitated themselves over time, yet each time the humans acted as though it was something new and chique. As far as Sarek was concerned, clothing was clothing. Its purpose was to cover the body and prevent nudity or cold.

He looked down at the clothing he wore and shifted, feeling as though the humans were all gazing at him. He wore a simple black leather jacket, and a thick red plaid sweater beneath that. He wore simple jeans and sneakers, and a simple black wool hat on his head. That morning, he had gone through the uncomfortable process of shaving the top half of his eyebrows and putting the adheisive on his ears to attatch the silicon. Fake hair adorned his now low-set eyebrows, and as he gazed at his new face in the mirror, he felt strange. He knew very well that it was he himself at which he gazed, but he somehow looked so drastically different than usual. He closed his eyes and repeated mantras in his cluttered head to clear it of anything but his current objective. He had planned early that morning to put on his human mask and go out into the city to observe and study their alien behaviours.

This objective in mind brought him to the small, bustling cafe in which he now sat. It was called "The Java Niche", and from the amount of people crowding in it, filling the place with their chatter, Sarek guessed that it was quite a popular little spot for humans to gather. It was filled with a multitude of diverse examples of the species, and Sarek found it fascinating to watch them interact with one another. There were so many levels of interaction, and so many different levels of relationship and relativity. He had to admit that he had always found humans extremely interesting. They had every single prominent caractaristic of every known species in the galaxy and they displayed each caractaristic and emotion in, sometimes, startlingly small intervals between each outburst. He was reminded of a comment on humans said by an old friend of Sarek's family to a close human friend of his, "_You have the arrogance of Andorians, the stubborn pride of Tellorites. One moment you're as driven by your emotions as Klingons, and the next you confound us by suddenly embracing logic!"_

Sarek held the same opinions about the plain-featured beings of Earth, and he decided that at least one good thing could be gleaned from the danger and difficulty of his looming mission.

* * *

The world was a confusing blurry mass of watery-looking colours to the bleary eyes of Amanda Grayson. She yawned widely and let out a puff of air from her sleep-swollen lips, curling further into the thick blanket that covered her body. She blinked twice attempting to make out the mass of orange that floated in front of her face, but to no avail. She took a warm finger to her eyes, rubbing the crust from them. Suddenly, something rough and wet was licking her face. She waved her arms disgustedly and wrenched her tired eyes open again once more to see the mass of orange reveal itself to be the striped fur and green eyes of the skinny tabby cat owned by the kind old woman Matilda Robins.

"Thomas, go away!" she said, shooing the cat from her, "Go on. Go!"

Completely ignoring her, the cat called Thomas began to purr and lept deftly onto the couch, curling his self comfortably on her stomach and closing his eyes contentedly. She glared exhaustedly at him and rolled over violently, trying to shake the feline off of her. Thomas dug in his claws to her blanket and rolled calmly with her, rearranging himself comfortably once more in the warm curve of her hip. She lifted her head and growled frustratedly, giving up on trying to rid herself of the furry nuisance. She pulled the blankets over her head and attempted to soak in the accumulated heat of her little nest. With a pang of regret, she realized that nature was calling, and that her body was very intent on answering its call.

Gathering up her courage to go out in the cold apartment, she flung the blankets off and dashed to the little bathroom near the kitchen, her feet hopping on the freezing floors and attempting to limit contact as much as possible. Once she was relieved, she walked back into the main room of the apartment in a much more dignified manner than she had left. When she returned, Matilda Robins was bobbing back and forth around her tiny kitchen, popping bread in her ancient stainless steel toaster and brewing some freash java in a yellowing coffeemaker. She was wearing a bright green floral patterned housecoat that went garishly with her fuzzy pink slippers. Her silvery, wavy hair was pulled up into a loose bun and her chocolate brown folded skin was taught around her whistling lips. She sang a tune that she had said her grandmother listened to on 45' when she was young. It went something like "_When times go bad, and you can't get enough, Won't you lay me down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff..."_, although Amanda could only remember those very few lines and the tune. Wordlessly, she joined Matilda in her efforts to make breakfast and whistled along, musing wonderingly at how archaic technology had been when the song was written.

_A/N: See what I did there? Haha. And for those of you who don't know what a 45' is, it's a small record with usually just one song on each side. They're singles, instead of the whole album. That's one of my social problems; I'll start talking about stuff like 45's, and everyone my age, very sadly enough, has no idea what I'm talking about. Let's just say that a large chunk of the young people where I abode now know quite a lot about random stuff than others in different areas might. Haha!_


End file.
